DA’NANG, Vietnam — The United States and Russia released a joint statement on Syria Saturday, the Kremlin said, after President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin met on the sidelines of an economic summit here.
The two men “confirmed their determination to defeat ISIS in Syria” and agreed to “maintain open military channels of communication” to ensure the safety of forces on both sides, a Kremlin-posted readout said.
The presidents also “agreed that there is no military solution to the conflict in Syria” and repeated calls for all parties to take part in the Geneva political process, according to the text of the joint statement published on the Kremlin’s website.
The U.S. has yet to release its own statement detailing the leaders’ discussion and the White House did not immediately respond to questions about the Kremlin announcement.
Trump has long expressed interest in working with Russia both to defeat ISIS and to help broker peace in civil war-ridden Syria. And though the two countries may find common ground on those subjects, the issue of Russian meddling in the 2016 election and intensifying investigations into the Trump campaign’s alleged collusion with the Kremlin still hang over the relationship.
Saturday was also not the first time Russia has beaten the United States on releasing descriptions of the leaders’ meetings or establishing its own early narrative out of those face-to-face conversations.
When the two leaders held a lengthy meeting in Hamburg over the summer, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov told reporters afterwards that Trump had accepted Putin’s denials about interfering in the 2016 election. Afterwards, a Trump administration official told NBC News Lavrov’s account was “not accurate” while Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said that Trump pressed President Putin “on more than one occasion” on the meddling issue.
Prior to Trump’s sideline meeting with Putin at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit, the White House said there would be no formal meeting between the two leaders, citing timing constraints and scheduling conflicts. They did, however, leave the door open to more casual encounters.
“They’re going to be in the same place,” White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders told reporters en route to Vietnam. “Are they going to bump into each other and say hello? Certainly possible and likely.”
By the time Trump left Vietnam for his next stop in Hanoi, he and Putin had conversed on several occasions while at APEC.